Come and learn about many techniques and tips from an elite team of mushroom cultivation specialists just before the Telluride Mushroom Festival Starts! Begin your journey here and become skilled at multiple cultivation strategies that include several hands-on demos with materials and growing kits that you can take with you. Perfect for beginner to intermediate growers, the class covers the basics of mushroom ecology and life cycles of many edible and medicinal mushrooms.
The workshop will cover production methods on logs and stumps, wood chips and composts, straw bale and agricultural byproducts, as well as low-tech cultivation and recycling wastes into edible mushrooms. Included in the class is ways of converting existing structures, the business and marketing of mushrooms, storage and shipping mushrooms, and value-added products that you can create to make your home business or farm unique. New techniques for morel cultivation will also be covered and discussed!
One of the best classes nationwide for its value, plus a rotating staff of professional mycologists with the depth of knowledge to expand your foundation and understanding of mushroom cultivation, this one will sell out and space is limited to 30 participants.
Some of the common familiar Fungi on Fungi include the Edible Lobster Mushroom (Hypomyces lactifluorum) that grows on Russula or Lactarius species and turns them orange and The Amanita Mold (Hypomyces hyalinus) that occurs on Amanitas. But there are many other interesting and unusual species.
At a foray several years back, I dug inside the garbage can and pulled out some rotting fungi. Upon closer examination I found 8 species that were growing on the decaying fungi that did not get recorded. It’s sort of fun to see what can be found with a closer look.
BONUS! A downloadable link to a 258 page PDF will be given at the end of the show that covers over 379 species of them.
Fungi are effective facilitators of chemical transport through ecosystems because of their vast mycelial networks and the ability to move large amounts of nutrients and pollutants from their environment into their mushroom fruiting bodies. While there is clear evidence of the hyperaccumulation of certain nutrients and heavy metals in mushrooms, bioaccumulation is highly variable between different chemicals and species of fungi. Additionally, for many organic pollutants, which are often the focus of mycoremediation discussions, very little data exists on the mushroom sequestration and in some cases there are not even established protocols for how to test for them.
In this presentation we will cover the mycelial uptake and transport of chemicals from their environment to their fruiting bodies then review the current understanding, or lack of understanding of which minerals, nutrients, heavy metals, and organic pollutants are stored well in mushrooms. The implications of this topic are wide reaching, from cultivating mineral fortified mushrooms to risks of foraging mushrooms in contaminated environments to ecological consequences of food web toxicity from mushroom hyperaccumulation.
Can you safely eat that oyster mushroom growing out of the oil spill? Where is the fungus taking those heavy metals? Are wild mushrooms more nutritionally potent than cultivated ones? We will explore these questions and more!
Field guides group mushrooms by forms—agarics are in one section, polypores in another, and so on—but molecular phylogenies show that there have been rampant shifts in morphology through evolution. In this talk, Dr. Hibbett will present selected examples of lineages where there have been dramatic shifts in morphology. He will also ask if there are any general evolutionary trends discernible, or if all this change is random?
Paul will explore the history and use of “magic” (i.e. psilocybin) mushrooms, from ancient times to current uses, as therapeutic medicines. His long history with psilocybin mushrooms, covered by a DEA license, led to discoveries of several news species, and the increasing popularity of “microdosing” could have broad ramifications for increasing intelligence or decreasing the trend toward dementia as we age. Psilocybin mushrooms could prove especially important for preserving and enhancing the intellectual capital of our society—at a time critical for creative, paradigm shifting breakthroughs that are needed for us to survive the 6th greatest extinction event in which we are immersed today.
This presentation will share a low-tech protocol and working model for working with decomposer fungi and other decomposers to address common toxic wastes, and will share back findings from recent experiments with applying this model to cigarette buts and machine lubricants. Case studies of the extensions and challenges of scaling up these models to municipal and commercial levels will be shared
This presentation will cover the theory of fungal decomposition and enzymatic degradation of lignin and the ways that we can apply this information to develop protocols for the standardization of mycoremediation strategies. Come hear about the latest advances in mycoremediation research, the successes and challenges of pilot projects, and how to integrate what we have learned so far into future applications.
The ability of different types of fungi to degrade various organic pollutants is well documented, yet ‘bioremediation’ strategies have not come into widespread industrial use or community practice. There is still much to learn about the potential roles fungi can play in remediating contaminated sites and the interplay of different types of organisms to increase the degradation and stabilization of organic and inorganic contaminants, especially in field and real-world conditions containing multiple, complex contaminants. This presentation will explore the opportunities and challenges of applying mycology to complex environmental issues.